BlackRock Cuts IBIT's Bitcoin Swap Minimum From $25M to $1M

BlackRock has cut the minimum size of a direct bitcoin-for-shares swap in its iShares Bitcoin Trust from $25 million to $1 million. The change reached the market through an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was written up by NewsBTC on 11 August and FinanceFeeds a day later. It applies to in-kind creations and redemptions, the mechanism by which an authorised participant hands over bitcoin and receives ETF shares instead of settling in cash. Retail holders cannot use it. Robbie Mitchnick, who runs digital assets at BlackRock, framed the cut as part of a widening on-ramp when he spoke to Bloomberg on 25 August.

What the smaller minimum actually opens

In-kind trading was cleared by regulators on 29 July 2025, and until this summer the $25 million floor kept the mechanism with large market makers and institutional trading desks. FinanceFeeds put the reduction at 96% and said registered investment advisers, family offices and smaller trading firms can now reach it through an authorised participant. That piece was explicit about the limit. The change does not turn IBIT into a self-custody product, and no retail investor can swap shares for coins. Mitchnick described the same threshold on Bloomberg TV on 10 August. "Bitcoiners can do in-kind exchanges of BTC for IBIT for $1 million minimum now. It used to be $25 million," he said in remarks carried by FinanceFeeds.

The growth line, and where it came from

The social post that brought this to the desk says Mitchnick made his comment "last week". The timing is off. Crypto.news and News.Bitcoin.com both dated the Bloomberg appearance to 25 August and published on 26 August, close to two weeks before this article.

"It's going to keep growing because we keep expanding the access," Mitchnick told Bloomberg on 25 August.

The two outlets carried the sentence in identical words, which is about as clean as verification of a broadcast quote gets. Neither reported him attaching a price forecast to it.

Two counts of the same fund

Figures for what IBIT holds do not agree. The post puts the trust at well over 765,000 BTC and above $60 billion. Crypto.news gave IBIT $60.65 billion in net assets as of 25 August, CoinDesk had it at $63 billion two days later, and the Bitbo tracker showed 784,301 BTC worth $62.49 billion on 4 September. The Block reported the fund crossing 800,000 BTC in October 2025, when its assets sat near $97 billion. The dollar range in the post holds up. The coin count does not match any tally we checked, and we could not establish which source it came from. It stands unverified as a present-day holding.

Rails, and what is not settled

The post's framing runs further than the filing does. Its author calls the cut evidence that Wall Street is building easier rails into bitcoin, and that the asset is becoming capital market infrastructure. Those readings belong to the author. What the documents support is narrower. A swap that once needed $25 million now needs $1 million, and IBIT had processed more than $5 billion in direct bitcoin-to-ETF conversions by late August, on crypto.news and News.Bitcoin.com's accounting; a creation basket ran about 22.65 BTC, or roughly $1.79 million, on the reference date crypto.news used. Demand for the wrapper has been heavy this year, including a $730.9 million single day across US spot bitcoin ETFs that was the largest since January. Access is widening elsewhere as well, and Standard Chartered has opened spot bitcoin and ether trading to institutions in the UAE. Nobody at BlackRock has put a number on what the $1 million floor will pull in. Until the trust's next disclosure lands, the coin count stays contested.